


Dreams

by LearnToShareFeanor



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Absolutely no incest, Answer to a prompt, Father-Son, Gen, Medicinal Drug Use, No Sex, Part of a larger LOTR Daemon AU I'm working on, slightly inspired by Dreams by Langston Hughes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-09
Updated: 2015-08-09
Packaged: 2018-04-13 18:37:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4532892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LearnToShareFeanor/pseuds/LearnToShareFeanor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erestor has lost everything. His city, his parents, his brother Ecthelion, and Glorfindel. Grieving, he cannot sleep, and he's given a sleeping potion that makes him have a strange dream. Sometimes visions are anchored in reality.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dreams

**Author's Note:**

> Another prompt! This one was made by me, for a friend, several years ago. I never really did anything with it, but I found it, somewhere in my computer, and decided to do and Erestor/Glorfindel. The muses said no.  
> The poem by Langston Hughes is Dreams, and it is:  
> Hold fast to dreams  
> For if dreams die  
> Life is a broken-winged bird  
> That cannot fly.  
> Hold fast to dreams  
> For when dreams go  
> Life is a barren field  
> Frozen with snow.
> 
> Update: I fixed some errors pointed out to me by a friend.

                Erestor has had difficulty sleeping lately. How can they look at him as if it’s wrong- as if he has no reason to be anxious or fearful? These sindar who took them in- they are kind, when away from their leader, but they do not understand having their entire country destroyed because of a traitor. Their brother did not die slaying 3 balrogs by the fountains, they did not watch their betrothed and beloved dragged to death by one of the foul shadow and flame beasts. Their parents did not survive this, only for the father to fall to a poisoned arrow and a mother to grief. They do not understand, do not know. His daemon, for the longest a great hawk, now 20 foot long monster of green and gray scales and teeth-more than can be counted, so many teeth- cannot sleep as well. They have settled, and they do not like the look. It is too much like the dragons that slew so many. He tries not to think of Rog, screaming in agony as the fire drake consumed him. It is hard.

                They do not know. They believe, perhaps, that these Noldori refugees who have brought an army of orcs behind them, do not feel. He knows, and knows well that they hide their feelings. Except for rage. Never rage. His daemon growls, softly.  _‘Balch’,_ he thinks. ‘ _Your name has never been more accurate.’_ His daemon agrees. But he takes their potions, supposed to ease a tired soul into dreamless sleep, as they all do, for what is he supposed to do? He does not know.

                He feels himself awaken, and then realizes that he is not awake at all. The strange clarity and vagueness of dreams surrounds him. He has never been so lucid in a dream, never been unable to see what’s going on around him. He feels, distantly, Balch begin to panic. He feels no fear, though, and takes a look at the lake he is near. It is nearing nightfall in this dream, and the lake is deep and dark. He wonders if it hides dark things, evil things. He would not be surprised. It is silent, though, except for bird song and frogs croaking. He kneels, touches the water, and suddenly he is on the other side of the lake, in that strange way only dreams have. There is a child, a Telerin child crying, and he holds it, close.

                “Ada!” It cries. “Ada, why did you die? Come back for me!” He wonders if he is this child’s father, where this lake is, why he cannot speak, so many things. Suddenly his stomach is turning, he tastes bile, and he is throwing up over the side of his cot into the dirt, awake. He hears retching and sobbing. Apparently he is not the only one.

                Why did the child’s father die? Why his own, his brother, his mother, his mate-to-be? The child raises a good question. Much like the sindar, he does not know.

                It is many years later that he is traveling with Gildor Inglorion and company, on a job for the king, and he sees, out of the corner of his eye, the child- sad, quiet, following two elves who seem intent on ignoring him. It is against Gildor’s advice that he goes to the lake that night, the night that, now that he thinks of it, is very similar to the one in his dreams. Winter is coming, and it is cold, wet, and a storm’s winds blow, creating large waves on the lake and making trees move against their will.

                It is almost one thousand years since he had the dream, induced by the strange poultice the sindar gave. He kneels and, as in his dream, cannot seem to speak to the tiny elfling that has been abandoned here to die. But the child speaks to him. “Ada died here. They want me to too.” It’s filled with the morbid certainty and tearfulness that only a child can manage, and he holds him. He holds him close, promises, silently, never to let the child he would soon call his son go, and carries him away from the lake. 

**Author's Note:**

> Translations: Balch- Quenya: fierce, ferocious and sometimes cruel, wild  
> Balch happens to be a crocodile, which would likely have been in the southern parts of the world.   
> Lindirs' is a common finch, though it's not really stated here.


End file.
